A Rival to Uber – Bolt Launched a Food Delivery Service

Bolt, which is an Estonia-based ride-hailing service, previously known as Taxify, has just launched its new food delivery service in Estonia. They are launching it natively, for now, but afterward they plan to expand to European countries such as Latvia and Lithuania, and African countries next year. The service is called Bolt Food and initially it will deliver meals and everything food related from around 80 restaurants in Tallinn, the capital of Estonia.

The food will be delivered using the company’s existing network of thousands of drivers. Previously in March Bloomberg had reported that the company’s CEO Markus Villig commented that he would want to bring the food delivery service anywhere in the world where they have a market-leading position.

Many experts are pointing out that Bolt is entering a very crowded market and might be a little bit too late. Main reason being the fact that American companies like Uber Eats and Amazon‘s Deliveroo is widely expanding. Also, Britain’s Just Eat just recently managed to unite with Takeaway.com in order to create the biggest food delivery network outside of China.

So why would Bolt enter such a crowded market in the first place? The company’s Chief Product Officer Jevgeni Kabanov explained that Bolt Food will be built on its existing 25 million user base and the company will offer lower food delivery prices compared to competitors. Another factor he mentioned was that the company would also pay more for the drivers.

All-in-all, the new service will be a new app called just like the service – Bolt Food.

The company was valued $1 billion last year and currently is operating in 30 countries. However, an interesting factor with this news is that Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said that he doesn’t actually expect its new food delivery service Uber Eats to make money in the next two years. That being said, Bolt’s Jevgeni Kabanov recently said that they wouldn’t enter a market if they weren’t convinced it was profitable:

“We would not do it if we did not believe that we have the opportunity to build a profitable business.”

Last year May Bolt raised $175 million in a funding round led by Daimler AG, and reached $1 billion valuation status.